I went to a fascinating lecture at the University of Brighton last night. It was given by Tara Brabazon, the new Professor of Media Studies at that august seat of learning, and was entitled 'Google is White Bread for the Mind'.
In addition to being highly engaging, enlightening and entertaining (oh, to have had lecturers like Prof Brabazon when I was a student!) it was also very provocative.
Prof Brabazon's position is that Google, Wikipedia and their ilk are 'flatlining culture' and engendering a stifling laziness in students who are all too willing to accept the results of a Google search without engaging in any critical analysis of those results. That confuses popularity with importance, and presents us with 'facts' minus a context. How can you tell if the first result on a Google search is independent and objective, and not just a superficial stab at the subject by the misinformed?
Google chooses what we need to know by encouraging us to go to the same piece of information that everyone else is viewing. Obviously, we can look elsewhere and sift through the pages, but on deadline and under pressure, who can honestly say that do that as regularly as they should? In the last few years especially, we've got in the habit of taking the easy route. Spoilt by the universe of information at our fingertips via Google and Wikipedia, we've forgotten our ability to interpret that information.
The return to media literacy that Prof Brabazon is calling for is as relevant to the business world as it is academia. I love to see examples of savviness and critical thought in a professional context but worry that people coming in to the PR industry are simply pushed in to the easy solution because of the need to satisfy clients/media who want more, sooner.
But do you know what the ironic thing is? Where did I go when I got home and looked for information on the Professor and her subject? You bet: Google.
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2 comments:
More concerns about Google's web omnipotence (quite rightly).
To play devil's advocate though, Google's ranking system is more sophisticated than implied. Links, rather than traffic, help determine rank position and, importantly, the search engine places stronger emphasis on links that (ironically and predictably) it deems as authorities.
Google has publicised its mission to deliver ever more relevant results to the user, but the company continues to veil itself behind its mysterious algorithms. This ultimately allows it to dictate the rules and perptuate its online regime.
Fair points, but its search results are still based on what Google, via its algorithms, deems most relevant. It's judge and jury.
The main point though, is that students (and, by implication, the majority of users of Google and its ilk) are failing to fully interrogate what they find when they search and that we need to get back in to the habit of asking 'why?'.
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